This paper examines mandatory occupational licensure in several professions from barbers, cosmetologists, radiologic technicians, CPAs, mid-level healthcare providers, and physicians. Mandatory licensure is cited as a mechanism for serving the public interest by assuring professionals possess...

In previous work with Mark Lemley I have discussed the critical role played by the courts in fitting patent law to the ongoing needs of innovation. Careful scrutiny of the recently enacted America Invents Act (AIA), which legislatively reforms American patent law, underscores the need for robust...

The business model used by Congress to pay for Social Security, Medicare and national debt is our costliest federal mandate. Because they run a national retirement plan without using compound interest, Congress makes us pay TWELVE dollars to do a ONE-dollar job. This business model is the root...

Adaptation by cities is critical in reducing the inevitable impact of climate change. Here we present the first large-sample evidence of cities' adaptation to elevated flood risk, a key consequence of climate change. We construct and analyze a new linguistic measure of adaptation extracted from...

This paper provides new evidence on the determinants of the US federal budget allocation to the states. Departing from the existing literature that gives prominence to Congress, we carry on an empirical investigation on the impact of Presidents during the period 1982-2000. Our findings suggest...

We analyze the relationship between senate malapportionment and the allocation of the US federal budget to the states during the period 1978-2002. A substantial literature originating from the influential paper by ?) finds that small and overrepresented states get significantly larger shares of...

The budget forms the legal basis of government spending. If a budget is not in place at the beginning of the fiscal year, planning as well as current spending are jeopardized and government shutdown may result. This paper develops a continuous-time war-of-attrition model of budgeting in a...

As with the market for goods and services, democratic competition involves political parties offering their services (policy programs) to citizen-consumers who vote for their preferred partisan supplier. Little is known about the partial effect of a shift in parties' seat shares for given voter...

Economists recommend Pigouvian taxes as the most efficient way to fight climate change. Yet, carbon taxes are difficult to implement politically. To understand why, we study Washington State's two failed carbon tax referendums from 2016 and 2018—the first such votes in the United States. We...

Does fiscal governance affect government borrowing costs? We operationalize fiscal governance as the ability of governments to pass a budget on time and, using a unique data set on budget enactment dates, analyze the effect of such late budgets on government bond yield spreads. Based on a sample...